my child - mother’s murder !’ - a horrified accusation and a challenge, and they break into a passionate interchange. It is not matricide, Orestes insists; her guilt will make it suicide. But her curse will hunt him down - no gentle warning now - but unless he murders her his father’s curse will do the same:
CLYTAEMNESTRA
I must be spilling live tears on a tomb of stone.
ORESTES
Yes, my father’s destiny - it decrees your death.
CLYTAEMNESTRA
Ai - you are the snake I bore - I gave you life!
ORESTES
Yes!
That was the great seer, that terror in your dreams.
You killed and it was outrage - suffer outrage now.
She creates her fate and she accepts it, and she rises to her tragic greatness. Her agony passes into affirmation - the mother’s death-cry is a birth-cry too, for she brings forth the destiny of her son; she turns his innocence into power. It is not purity of heart that impels Orestes; it is his mother’s heart. Apollo can reduce him to an instrument of vengeance. Only she can generate his action as a man. These are the poles of the tragic quandary: the yoke of necessity and the drive of human will, and Orestes must incorporate them both. He is his father’s and his mother’s son, but he and Clytaemnestra are better than Agamemnon and his gods. More than enact a brutal destiny blindly, they would counteract it with creative sorrow - with their painful, mutual awareness that outrage must be met by greater outrage.
As Orestes takes his mother through the doors, the women celebrate the gods and sing of justice, oblivious to all that lies ahead. The light of freedom is breaking through the dark, as they maintain, but when the doors swing open and the torches blaze, we behold a ‘dawn of the darkness’ once again, a stunning déjà vu. Sword in hand, Orestes rises over the bodies of Clytaemnestra and her lover, as she had risen over his father and Cassandra. Like his mother, he claims to end the curse, to play the role of justice. But history repeats itself, as Joyce advises, with a difference. Orestes is frenzied by the memory of his victim - then, summoned by his own incriminations, the fury of his mother maddens him with deeper and deeper states of moral insight. Her medium is her masterpiece, the robes that entangled Agamemnon’s body and now entangle hers. In fact the robes produce a family reunion; they unite the murdered parents with their son, the avenger and the matricide - the robes present the love knot of his mission and his guilt. For Orestes exhibits them, as Clytaemnestra did, to exonerate himself, but he finds the stains not only of his father’s blood, his rightful cue to passion, but of his mother’s, too. He embraces the robes as if they were the king, fulfilling his debt of mourning; embracing them as if they were the queen, he cries aloud his crime. He cannot assume his parents’ powers unless he accepts their dark pathologies as well. The public trial that concluded Agamemnon has narrowed into the young man’s troubled psyche, rendering him the judge and convict both. Standing in his mother’s steps, he is the latest victim of the curse.
Yet Orestes is also the consummation of the curse. His father embodies its negative aspect, its murderousness. Orestes adds the fierce humanity of his mother, and in their relationship the curse may begin to find its cure. For he, unlike his father, gives his mother what she always needed, worthy opposition. He is endowed with all her gifts, from verbal agility to moral stature - the mother and the son complete each other. Orestes has an Oedipus complex, with a difference. ‘Indeed he does,’ some will object, ‘he loves his father and murders his mother!’ But what we mean is that he rivals his father and replaces him because his authority is more valid, more humane. Perhaps because he hungers for his mother, and that hunger is channelled into the psychic richness and responsibility that flourishes between them. Even though he kills her, yes,
CLYTAEMNESTRA
I must be spilling live tears on a tomb of stone.
ORESTES
Yes, my father’s destiny - it decrees your death.
CLYTAEMNESTRA
Ai - you are the snake I bore - I gave you life!
ORESTES
Yes!
That was the great seer, that terror in your dreams.
You killed and it was outrage - suffer outrage now.
She creates her fate and she accepts it, and she rises to her tragic greatness. Her agony passes into affirmation - the mother’s death-cry is a birth-cry too, for she brings forth the destiny of her son; she turns his innocence into power. It is not purity of heart that impels Orestes; it is his mother’s heart. Apollo can reduce him to an instrument of vengeance. Only she can generate his action as a man. These are the poles of the tragic quandary: the yoke of necessity and the drive of human will, and Orestes must incorporate them both. He is his father’s and his mother’s son, but he and Clytaemnestra are better than Agamemnon and his gods. More than enact a brutal destiny blindly, they would counteract it with creative sorrow - with their painful, mutual awareness that outrage must be met by greater outrage.
As Orestes takes his mother through the doors, the women celebrate the gods and sing of justice, oblivious to all that lies ahead. The light of freedom is breaking through the dark, as they maintain, but when the doors swing open and the torches blaze, we behold a ‘dawn of the darkness’ once again, a stunning déjà vu. Sword in hand, Orestes rises over the bodies of Clytaemnestra and her lover, as she had risen over his father and Cassandra. Like his mother, he claims to end the curse, to play the role of justice. But history repeats itself, as Joyce advises, with a difference. Orestes is frenzied by the memory of his victim - then, summoned by his own incriminations, the fury of his mother maddens him with deeper and deeper states of moral insight. Her medium is her masterpiece, the robes that entangled Agamemnon’s body and now entangle hers. In fact the robes produce a family reunion; they unite the murdered parents with their son, the avenger and the matricide - the robes present the love knot of his mission and his guilt. For Orestes exhibits them, as Clytaemnestra did, to exonerate himself, but he finds the stains not only of his father’s blood, his rightful cue to passion, but of his mother’s, too. He embraces the robes as if they were the king, fulfilling his debt of mourning; embracing them as if they were the queen, he cries aloud his crime. He cannot assume his parents’ powers unless he accepts their dark pathologies as well. The public trial that concluded Agamemnon has narrowed into the young man’s troubled psyche, rendering him the judge and convict both. Standing in his mother’s steps, he is the latest victim of the curse.
Yet Orestes is also the consummation of the curse. His father embodies its negative aspect, its murderousness. Orestes adds the fierce humanity of his mother, and in their relationship the curse may begin to find its cure. For he, unlike his father, gives his mother what she always needed, worthy opposition. He is endowed with all her gifts, from verbal agility to moral stature - the mother and the son complete each other. Orestes has an Oedipus complex, with a difference. ‘Indeed he does,’ some will object, ‘he loves his father and murders his mother!’ But what we mean is that he rivals his father and replaces him because his authority is more valid, more humane. Perhaps because he hungers for his mother, and that hunger is channelled into the psychic richness and responsibility that flourishes between them. Even though he kills her, yes,
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